414 state workers in Humboldt County eye Dec. 5 walkout

Nearly 420 unionized state workers in Humboldt County may participate in a one-day walkout Dec. 5 during ongoing wage negotiations.

Employees from 15 state offices in Humboldt County would be affected by the walkout. Nearly 75 percent of the unionized employees in the county work for the Department of Fish and Wildlife and Department of Transportation, though it is currently unclear how many of these employees will participate.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000 union announced last week 92 percent of its voting members voted to authorize the one-day strike.

“Since we started this journey, we have kept our eyes on winning a contract we can all be proud of,” union president Yvonne R. Walker said in a statement last week. “A contract that respects our work and values the services we provide to all Californians. That hasn’t changed. However, the state has failed to budge from its opening proposal regarding wages for state workers with no explanation or justification.”

The SEIU Local 1000 represents more than 95,000 state workers in nine of the state’s 21 bargaining units, which include librarians, engineers and nurses to name a few. The union has been in negotiations with Gov. Jerry Brown over a wage increase since April and has rejected the state’s offer of a 12 percent salary increase over four years, which the union said would be offset by a 3.5 percent increase in their contribution to the state’s retirement liability.

Walker argues that the state can afford a larger increase as the world’s sixth-largest economy with a projected $11.5 billion rainy day fund. She also said the state has failed to address the union’s concerns about the gender wage gap. Two-thirds of the union’s members are women, and a state report based on 2014 data found a 20.5 percent gender pay gap for California’s civil service employees, about the national average.

“The state has made deals with male-dominated state worker groups that include wages 43 percent higher than our average pay,” she wrote in a message on the union’s website.

Joe DeAnda, a spokesman for the state CalHR agency, previously stated that the state will continue bargaining in good faith.

“This includes balancing recognition of our hard-working employees, with protecting the long-term viability of retiree health benefits and maintaining the integrity of the state’s finances,” he said in an email last week.

Meanwhile, a local chapter of the SEIU Local 2015, which represents 1,200 in-home health care workers in Humboldt County, is currently negotiating its own wage contracts with the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors. The union is calling on the county to provide a higher wage than the state minimum wage, which is set to increase to $15 per hour by 2020.

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Human Resources Director Dan Fulks said the minimum wage increase would provide a dollar per year raise for the next five years.

“That is a significant increase in wages for this group of employees,” he said.

Local 2015 organizer Julie Ryan said the previous two-year contract, which expired in July, also held wages at the state minimum wage. Ryan also said there is a health care crisis in the county, and there is not enough in-home care staff to provide for the number of hours needed to care for all in-home care patients in the county, adding that providing a higher than minimum wage would help attract more care providers to the area.

“There is definitely a need for our community to provide a stronger network of support for the elderly and disabled,” she said.

The SEIU Local 2015 is supporting the strike vote of its fellow Local 1000 chapter, but Ryan said the union is not striking and would not strike due to its members working in the health care sector.

Both Fulks and Ryan said they are making progress toward a contract.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Will Houston can be reached at 707-441-0504.